Martin Meyer: Mkhwanazi & Meyer in operation to reclaim hijacked havens for hitmen

In his latest interview with BizNews, KZN Public Works and Infrastructure MEC Martin Meyer gives Chris Steyn an update on major developments in his department. He confirms talks with KZN Provincial Police Commissioner General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi on a strategy to reclaim 300 hijacked houses and properties that have become havens for KZN's notorious hitmen. He also describes how the department has dealt with a contractor who had caused a five-year-delay on a 20-month hospital project. Meyer recalls how when he first took on the Construction Mafia, his security had to be increased. “On two separate occasions, bullets were found as a warning, once in my vehicle and another time at the front door of my office. But since then, things have quieted down. Those were intimidation tactics. I think they learned quite quickly that this laatie is not being intimidated and I'm not going anywhere and I'm not gonna stop because we have to fight for what is right…it's now almost nine months that none of our sites have been disrupted by armed guards.”Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:01.086)The National Construction Summit is taking place in Gauteng today. We catch up with KZN Public Works and Infrastructure MEC Martin Meyer, who is there on the summit as well as other really important developments in his department. Welcome, Martin. Martin Meyer (00:17.484)Thank you so much, thank you for having me. Chris Steyn (00:22.964)First, let us go to that first court case involving a Construction Mafia that delayed a hospital project by five years. Martin Meyer (00:35.234)Yeah, so it's one of our contractors that have been giving us very bad problems. That hospital is way behind schedule. I went myself to go and inspect it. It was using shoddy materials, not up to spec. The safety of the site was compromised, so we couldn't ensure that the people working on site were safe. And this is a live hospital, so there's still patients around and everything like that. So we made a decision to close down the site. The next day, armed people showed up on site trying to force us to take the contract. We took a very strong stance. We opened the case, we went to court. Luckily, we could withdraw the case because the contractor has now admitted that he's not allowed on our site and has withdrawn. So we have now stopped the case because we don't also want to waste the tax payers money on frivolous cases if we got what we wanted. We're now in the process of ending his contract. He said he's going to take us to court. He's more than welcome to. We are very strong in our case against him. And we will make sure that he gets blacklisted as well through the National Treasury so that he will never do work with any department of government. Chris Steyn (01:44.638)Meanwhile, I understand there have been discussions between you and the KZN Provincial Police Commissioner, a man who's in the news almost every day, to come up with a strategy to deal with or reclaim 300 hijacked houses and properties that have become havens for KZN's notorious hitmen. Martin Meyer (02:04.526)Yeah, it was a bit scary seeing my name in the same headline as Lieutenant General Mkhwanazi’s, but luckily it was all good things and I'm not in trouble. But yes, so we finished our audit of properties that we did all in-house, we're very proud of it, but we found that just over 300 of our properties across the province are illegally occupied. A lot of them are old government houses from when Ulundi was the capital of Zululand and later of KZN for the first few years of the province. And when our officials were needed to try and assess the houses, see who's living in there, what the state of the houses is, they were chased away by armed people, some of them armed with automatic rifles. We've then approached the Premier Ntuli, who's also the executive authority for Community Safety and Security within the province. And together with him, we also reached out to Lieutenant General Mkhwanazi. We are in the planning phases, that SAPS, through a Task Team, will assist us. We will send our people in just not to evict anyone at this moment unless we find illegal activities that we do know is happening there. But first of all, just to assess, see what the situation is, who's living there, do raids if there's illegal activities. We’ll take Home Affairs with us as well and start taking control of the situation with these properties…. Chris Steyn (03:22.506)Taking on the Construction Mafia is a brave thing. Are you getting many threats personally? Martin Meyer (03:30.068)So the first few months was a bit hectic. My security had to be increased. On two separate occasions, bullets were found as a warning, once in my vehicle and another time at the front door of my office. But since then, things have quieted down. Those were intimidation tactics. I think they learned quite quickly that this laatie is not being intimidated and I'm not going anywhere and I'm not gonna stop because we have to fight for what is right. And it petered down, even though now and then a threat will pop up still, but we can also very proudly say, and I'm not saying it's over, it's far from over, but it's now almost nine months that none of our sites has been disrupted by armed guards, except this last event in Ulundi, but that was handled very quickly, so we don't really count it as a disruption, more of an attempted disruption. And that we really think we've turned the corner with our carrot and our stick approach against Construction Mafia in KZN Chris Steyn (04:27.018)Also please share with us the outcome of your recent trip to India. Martin Meyer (04:32.353)Yes, it was quite an interesting trip. I really enjoyed it and was there as a guest of the, they call the provinces states, of the State of Kerala, which is very similar to KZN. It's a coastal state, very much shaped like us and facing very much similar climate change problems as we do. We went mostly to go and learn from them about climate change, how they build climate resilient infrastructure there. We are now in the process of closing the deal between province and the state where our professionals will go there for a few weeks to learn the skills and the methods there and bring it back because we skills transfer is the best deal for both. We will also take some of our skills because we also have some good skills and we'll take it there as the skills exchange between the two, the province and the State of Kerala. But also they have made huge headway in India with the issue of pit toilets. And as you know, we still struggle with pit toilets, especially in schools. The problem is much smaller than it used to be, but the problem we face is many of our rural schools don't have running water. So I can't just replace a pit toilet with a normal flush toilet because there's no water to flush with. So India has some great innovations there that we're also going to go, we went there to learn a bit about that. And we want to bring in our tertiary institutions to find a good sub-African encased end-based solutions to this problem of pit toilets in our schools. Chris Steyn (06:00.148)Now, meanwhile, there was a bit of a rift in the Provincial Government of Unity with one of the parties being unhappy and that threatened the stability of your government in the province. Has that settled down now? Martin Meyer (06:13.39)So, you we know that coalition governments in Africa is still relatively new. We see in local government level, it can be very unstable. But I think generally compared to the GNU and where it is in local government, I think the GPU in KZN has probably been one of the most stable coalitions so far. It's been a year and a half. But you know, I'm a social worker by background. I used to do a lot of wedding counseling, marriage counseling, and I can tell you all marriages has its problems and it gets its hiccups. And it's the same with this marriage. And this marriage is between four parties, not just two people. So there will be some hiccups and that's normal. But I firmly believe the GPU is still the best solution to KZN. If you look at the unemployment numbers, it looks like the investors are saying the same thing about KZN. And the government is stable. We are still talking to each other when there's problems, we will have our disagreements. Chris Steyn (00:00.782)That was KZN Public Works and Infrastructure MEC Martin Meyer speaking to BIzNews. I am Chris Steyn. Thank you,

Martin Meyer: Mkhwanazi & Meyer in operation to reclaim hijacked havens for hitmen

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